On today's show, Stone is joined by Will Scharf, a former federal prosecutor and current candidate for the Office of Attorney General of Missouri, to discuss the latest developments in the Trump trial, including the judge's decision to shield the identity of certain witnesses, and the Supreme Court's ruling allowing President Trump to assert his Fifth Amendment immunity in the case. Also, Stone and Troy Smith discuss whether or not a former president should be able to be tried on a trumped-up business records charge, and what that might mean for the future of the case as it pertains to the case against President Trump and the other former presidents who have been accused of similar crimes. Also, the Stone Zone is brought to you by Slingshot News and The Stone Zone, a production of Native Creative Podcasts. Roger Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents. He is a New York Times bestselling author and a longtime friend and advisor of President Donald Trump. As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society, and has lectured at countless events. Due to his four-plus decades in the political and cultural arena, Roger Stone is a pop culture icon and has become a pop-culture icon. This may be the first presidential contest in American history, in which a presidential candidate is more decided than in the polls than at the ballot box. - Roger Stone - The Stonezone with legendary strategist and political icon and pundit Roger Stone joins me on the show with his regular co-host Troy Smith on the Stone Zone on the latest episode of and joins me to discuss what's going on in the ongoing spectacle of the Trump-Russia investigation. The Stone zone with Roger Stone. Join us on the Stonezone! . Roger is , The StoneZONE & The Stonez Zone with in the StoneZ Zone with Roger Stone on The Stone Zone with Troy Smith the Stone and joins us on to talk about all things Trump- related to the Trump/Russia/Russia case. and the ongoing Trump/Pizzagate scandal, The White House Correspondent s podcast, and much more! and we have a special guest, Will Sarrar on the case and much much more.
00:00:00.000The Stone Zone, with legendary Republican strategist and political icon and pundit Roger Stone.
00:00:13.600Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents.
00:00:17.920He is a New York Times bestselling author and a longtime friend and advisor of President Donald Trump.
00:00:23.560As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts,
00:00:27.520spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society.
00:00:34.540Due to his four-plus decades in the political and cultural arena, Stone has become a pop culture icon.
00:00:39.880And now, here's your host, Roger Stone.
00:00:47.480Welcome, I'm Roger Stone, and yes, you are back in the Stone Zone.
00:00:52.840This may be the first presidential contest in American history.
00:00:57.520That is more decided than in the courts than at the ballot box.
00:01:03.800We have the ongoing spectacle of a former president of the United States being prosecuted in Manhattan on a trumped-up charge that, at worst, would be a business records violation.
00:01:21.060That would be even if Trump himself were guilty of that, which he is accused.
00:01:26.940This is a travesty, one that I myself have been through.
00:01:31.100For the judge, despite various acts of bias, including a campaign contribution to Joe Biden and a classic conflict of interest in which his daughter, an adult Democrat political operative, makes millions of dollars using the very trial that he presides over as a talking point in her fundraising.
00:01:54.400You have the president moving for a change of venue, as I did.
00:02:19.000I was never allowed to prove that there had never been any online hack of the Democratic National Committee by the Russians or, for that matter, anyone else.
00:02:31.040So, pardon me if I've seen this movie.
00:02:34.760There were also, however, extremely important arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court pertaining to the immunity of a U.S. president.
00:02:45.040We're going to be talking about that today.
00:02:48.720Joining me first is my regular co-host, Troy Smith, the editor-in-chief of Slingshot.news.
00:03:56.040Every week, it seems that Judge Cannon, who seems to me to be exactly what the hard left doesn't want, an honest judge guided by the rule of law, continues to strip back the veil.
00:04:13.760Well, because, as I learned in my own case, these prosecutors love to operate in secrecy.
00:04:19.400They love to redact as much as they possibly can so that the people, and maybe even the plaintiff, doesn't really totally understand, pardon me, the defendant doesn't always totally understand what exactly has transpired and what is currently going on.
00:04:37.160So starting with that case, I'm interested in your observations in the most recent developments in the case, including the judge's decision to continue to shield the identity of certain potential witnesses, but also more recent decisions in the case.
00:04:57.900Yeah, so Judge Cannon has released publicly information, some of which was known, some of which wasn't, but some of these unredacted documents are very, very interesting.
00:05:11.020So, for example, we had documents released last week relating to the very serious allegations of misconduct that have been leveled by Walt Nauta's attorney.
00:05:22.880Walt Nauta is one of President Trump's co-defendants, a personal aide to President Trump.
00:05:27.660Walt Nauta's attorneys have leveled very serious accusations of misconduct against a prosecutor in the special counsel's office named Jay Bratt.
00:05:36.080The allegation is basically that in an early meeting between Jay Bratt and Walt Nauta's attorney, Stanley Woodward, Bratt essentially threatened Woodward that if he couldn't get Nauta to testify, his pending application for a D.C. Superior Court judgeship would be in jeopardy.
00:05:55.000That is a very, very serious accusation.
00:05:58.020It had been reported on publicly in a number of publications, but we hadn't seen it made public in court documents until last week.
00:06:08.580There were also revelations relating to how exactly these boxes of documents ended up in President Trump's possession, and it appears, based on the unredacted documents, that actually a very large quantity of these boxes were shipped directly to President Trump on a pallet by NARA, the National Archives.
00:06:28.120Remember that President Trump is being charged essentially with willfully possessing national defense information that he knew he didn't have the right to have in his possession and then refusing to turn it over to a federal official he knew had the right to possess it.
00:06:45.480Now, if those documents were shipped to President Trump directly from the federal government, proving that he knew he wasn't supposed to have them becomes a much, much thornier factual question for the prosecution.
00:06:57.820So, in short, seeing all of these things that have been kind of under the table and whispered about come to light in public court documents in the last few days, I think really shows how weak that prosecution is and shows some of the very serious issues, both ethical and legal, that I think will continue to come to light in the coming months.
00:07:19.920It seemed to me in some of the earlier oral arguments, while the judge appeared, of course, is always reading the tea leaves, but while it appeared that the judge was not buying the Presidential Records Act as providing a shield to the president in this area, she did seem somewhat more interested in the Selective Prosecution Act.
00:07:46.720I mean, we do have a report from a special counsel, a special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland, who could have appointed anyone he wanted, that specifically says that President Joe Biden willfully retained certain top secret and classified documents in violation of the law.
00:08:08.420Now, while they go on to say that despite the fact they say several places that he did this, they go on to say that he should not essentially be prosecuted because of his age, kind of an odd conclusion.
00:08:21.320Beyond that, you still have, in the documents case, a preservation by the president's lawyers of a potential challenge to the legality of Jack Smith's very appointment.
00:08:39.920There is, I think, a legitimate legal theory, without getting in the weeds, that because he was never approved by the U.S. Senate, because he was not a sitting U.S. attorney, and thus having been approved by the U.S. Senate, I should say confirmed, that his appointment may be illegitimate.
00:09:02.580Tell me your thinking on all of that, if you would.
00:09:05.260Yeah, so on the Presidential Records Act point, what Judge Cannon has basically said is that she views that as an issue for trial.
00:09:13.400So I think that we will end up presenting evidence based on the Presidential Records Act that President Trump believed that he had the right to retain these documents.
00:09:23.480And that is a defense under the law based on the Espionage Act subsection that President Trump has been charged with.
00:09:30.940And if the jury believes that President Trump believed that he had the right to retain these documents, then that would be a defense.
00:09:40.500So while the case wasn't dismissed on the basis of the Presidential Records Act, that's going to be an issue for trial.
00:09:47.140On the appointments question, we've made that argument in Florida, as has former Attorney General Ed Meese and a number of others, that Jack Smith's appointment is constitutionally invalid.
00:09:57.980That's going to be an issue that we're going to have to see play out in the courts, likely both at the district court level and on appeal.
00:10:05.920But I think the argument is compelling and strong.
00:10:08.420We've never had a special counsel before who had not gone through the Senate confirmation process, who was not thereby made an officer of the United States through the typical constitutional process.
00:10:23.980And on the selective prosecution point, I think it's clear that this is a selective prosecution, whether the case ends up being dismissed or not.
00:10:32.700I think the optics around all of these documents cases just think that, you know, Hillary Clinton was given a slap on the wrist.
00:10:39.660Joe Biden won't be prosecuted because I guess the jury would be too sympathetic because he's old and forgetful.
00:10:45.260And yet President Trump is facing felony indictment in the Southern District of Florida over exactly the same offenses, whereas the conduct of Biden and Hillary doesn't even have the legal shield of the Presidential Records Act and some of the other defenses that we've raised.
00:10:59.600So I think it's clearly a case of selective prosecution.
00:11:02.220I think the American people understand that.
00:11:04.700And we'll have to see how that plays out in court in the coming weeks.
00:11:07.700Folks, if you're just tuning in, we're talking to Will Scharf, who is one of President Trump's attorneys, a very able attorney, also a candidate for the Office of Attorney General of Missouri.
00:11:23.780We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
00:11:26.220I'm here with my co-host, Troy Smith, and our guest, Will Scharf.
00:11:29.980We're going to take a quick commercial break, and we'll be back with Will Scharf for some more discussion of the tsunami of lawfare being waged at President Donald Trump.
00:14:59.000President Trump was making, I'd say, diligent efforts to comply with reasonable requests for documents.
00:15:05.060He was personally going through many of these boxes to find materials that were requested or that had to be returned.
00:15:13.320President Trump was, I'd say, fully cooperative up until the point that DOJ raided Mar-a-Lago in a completely unprecedented, unwarranted, unjustified, blatant use of force.
00:15:26.800So I think that's an absolute garbage narrative.
00:15:30.020And it's also worth noting that Mar-a-Lago is a Secret Service secured facility totally on a different level than Joe Biden's garage, where these boxes and boxes of top secret documents seem to have just been sitting around for years.
00:15:44.240Biden himself said that he didn't know how these documents came to be in his possession, came to be in different places, which shows a total lack of awareness, lack of really the presence of any responsible chain of custody in stark contradistinction to President Trump's actions and activities.
00:16:04.620So I think the facts of the case against Joe Biden are far more damning than the facts in President Trump's case.
00:16:12.320And that's reflected in our selective prosecution motion.
00:16:15.800And I think the American public understands that.
00:16:19.160Again, the idea that President Trump may be forced to stand trial over these sorts of document retention issues, particularly the fact that he was indicted under the Espionage Act, I think just to sort of inflame the passions of the American people, it definitely speaks to selective prosecution.
00:16:37.540We've moved to dismiss on that ground.
00:16:39.960And I think that contrary, again, to the mainstream media narrative, that Florida case is far, far weaker on the facts and on the law than people realize.
00:16:50.200And we're hopeful that more of that comes to light again in the coming weeks and months.
00:16:54.840Look, I'm a layman, and I'm very grateful for the for the X and sub stack of Julie Kelly, who seems to move very quickly to analyze the latest filings, highlight them for them for you, try to explain what they mean.
00:17:13.220I mean, she does an amazing job, proud to be a subscriber for her sub stack.
00:17:18.840But it would actually appear to me before we leave the documents case, that the more that is redacted, the more you see what appears to me to be a conspiracy to entrap the president of the United States to set him up.
00:17:34.600I mean, it appears to me he didn't ask for this ballot of documents, boxes of documents to be sent to Florida.
00:17:42.360They were sent at the at the initiative of NARA, who then turns around and says, oh, look, the president has all these documents he's not supposed to have.
00:17:54.620I don't think that's unfair. I think we're going to see more facts about exactly how these documents came to be at Mar-a-Lago and frankly, what was in these boxes of documents as this case continues to play out in court.
00:18:09.160I agree with you. Julie Kelly is an absolute killer. She seems to move through court filings faster than than I can.
00:18:15.260I'm not on the trial team in Florida, so I'm actually seeing much of this information for the first time as it's being unredacted.
00:18:22.100And and she's been just an awesome resource and I think a great resource to the public, at least the public who's interested in following the objective truth about all of these cases.
00:18:32.320But but I think that's right, that these documents, again, they have to prove as part of the charges, as part of these Espionage Act charges, that President Trump knew that he did not have the right to retain these documents.
00:18:44.120And the fact that they were effectively being shipped to him by the federal government, I think, creates a very, very serious factual question that any fair jury would rightfully scrutinize over the president's knowledge and intent, which is ultimately at the heart of this case.
00:18:58.640Well, are we are we ever going to know exactly what these documents pertain to seems to me that that's the great mystery here seems to me that the government would like to charge President Trump for the retention of certain documents,
00:19:17.260but they don't particularly want the American people to know what those documents pertain to.
00:19:25.120I think we haven't seen those publicly so far.
00:19:28.400I think if the case were to move to trial, we would probably or we would hear a lot more about them and probably see the documents themselves.
00:19:36.000I would note, though, that, you know, this is often talked about as a classified documents case, which is actually a legal misnomer.
00:19:45.200The Espionage Act section that President Trump is charged under refers to national defense information, not classified information.
00:19:53.600National defense information or NDI is a separate classification under the law, relates specifically to information that could damage America or help its foreign adversaries.
00:20:04.840As you know, classification is a controversial issue.
00:20:08.960I think most people would agree that the government overclassifies quite radically.
00:20:14.140We're not talking about classified information here just because a document had a classified marking on it, was designated, you know, secret, top secret, confidential, et cetera, does not make it national defense information under the law.
00:20:29.180And that's going to be another factual issue that's going to have to play out as this case progresses.
00:20:34.840But it's just really important to focus on what President Trump is actually being charged with as opposed to what the media represents this case as.
00:20:43.240I think that's equally true, actually, in the New York trial.
00:20:45.780But in Florida in particular, it's really important to note that this is willful possession without appropriate right of national defense information specifically.
00:20:58.080And I think the government's going to have a very difficult time proving that because President Trump didn't do anything wrong.
00:21:03.500OK, so before we move to a discussion of those Supreme Court arguments last week, let's touch for a moment on the New York case, your assessment of that so far.
00:21:19.100I mean, I've known Donald Trump for 45 years.
00:21:23.720I know him extremely well, and I can see that he is angry, which I think he has every right to be.
00:21:30.540I think he's bored because he has to sit there in a trial when he should be out campaigning for president or raising money for his campaign for president.
00:21:40.440I can understand the indignity of this because it is it's a stretch, to say the least, my opinion, your thoughts of how that trial is going so far.
00:21:52.140So far, I think it's going very, very well.
00:21:55.180I'm somewhat limited in what I can say about witness testimony because of the unconstitutional unilateral gag order that Judge Mershon applied against us.
00:22:03.300But by all reports, things are going very, very well.
00:22:06.980And I think the reason for that is that President Trump didn't actually do anything wrong here.
00:22:12.420What he's being charged with is a business records violation.
00:22:15.380The allegation is that recordings made in his personal ledger in 2017 inaccurately reflected payments made to Michael Cohen, his lawyer, as legal retainer payments.
00:22:28.200Now, as Todd Blanche, attorney for President Trump, said in opening arguments, the relevant entries made were not made by President Trump.
00:22:38.340He was in the White House running the country.
00:22:41.240The business entries in question were made by a woman named Deb in Trump Tower, hundreds and hundreds of miles away in New York.
00:22:50.260And President Trump didn't really have anything to do with those.
00:22:54.060So, again, the business records themselves were not inaccurate.
00:22:57.980They reflected legal payments to President Trump's lawyer as as that.
00:23:03.440And President Trump didn't really make them.
00:23:06.400So just at a very basic factual level, this case doesn't have any legs to stand on.
00:23:13.380And that's why I think what you're going to see, what we've seen and will continue to see, is a smoke and mirrors strategy by the DA's office, that they're going to throw up all of this smoke about election stuff and decades old stories about affairs and, you know, playboy playmates and whatever else.
00:23:31.780But in terms of the actual facts of the case, I think as the factual picture becomes more and more clear, it's going to come increasingly into focus that President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong here, that this case is a show trial.
00:23:47.220And I would hope that any fair-minded juror would vote to acquit for that reason alone.
00:23:51.420And I think that, you know, even in a New York jury, the facts here are going to be strong enough that we're going to end up winning the day here.
00:23:59.440Well, from your mouth to God's ear, look, if paying a woman to maintain her silence regarding a sexual affair or a crime, well, then Bill Clinton would be in jail because he paid Paula Jones $868,000 in a settlement and in a nondisclosure agreement.
00:24:25.160And that assumes that Trump is, in fact, guilty of what he's accused of.
00:24:29.120And as you just pointed out, that's not at all been proven.
00:24:33.560It just seems to me this is, with their strategy in Florida stalled, with their strategy in D.C. stalled, this is all they have.
00:24:43.360And they will try to use it to vilify the president, drain his time.
00:24:50.500This is absolutely key, from the campaign trail, and obviously drain his money for attorneys.
00:24:58.200Although it was revealed last week, after all of the criticism of the president of having super PACs associated with him pay his legal fees, in actions that are all related to his running for president, he wouldn't be a defendant if he weren't running for president.
00:25:18.240Now we learn the Democratic National Committee has been paying Joe Biden's legal fees as they pertain to the investigation of the special counsel looking into his illegal retention of documents as vice president and as a U.S. senator.
00:25:36.900Let's get to the Supreme Court and the immunity agreement.
00:25:43.540That is obviously a crucial decision by the court.
00:25:48.460Just to review for people, the president's lawyers first raised the immunity issue at the trial court level.
00:25:57.800They then went to appeal to the appeals court in D.C.
00:26:03.340A special counsel, Smith, wanted to leapfrog the appeals court, go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to expedite his prosecution.
00:26:15.360The Supreme Court would not agree to that.
00:26:18.640Therefore, they ended up back at the appeals court.
00:26:21.560The appeals court ruled against the president.
00:26:26.700The appeals court sat on the appeal of my gag for 16 months and then ruled that it wasn't ripe for decision because I had never asked the original trial judge who had placed the illegal unconstitutional gag on me to remove the gag as if she would have ever done so.
00:26:46.460So I sustained 16 months of damage where the CNN and the Washington Post were destroying me as a Russian spy, as a traitor, etc., etc.
00:26:57.980So I had did not have a high hopes for the appeals court in D.C.
00:27:04.300And then the matter is now before the Supreme Court.
00:27:08.040Your associate, Mr. Sauer, has been criticized, to be fair, about his handling of one specific question regarding whether if I can get this right, if the president ordered the assassination of his political opponents,
00:27:25.520would he have immunity from prosecution?
00:27:30.940It's a distraction, I agree, from the larger issues.
00:27:34.820But tell us how you think the argument went last week and address that specific issue, if you could.
00:27:41.860Yeah, we thought the arguments went very, very well.
00:27:44.640And we think that's evidenced by the fact that there was a massive liberal media freak out immediately after the arguments.
00:27:51.260So we felt very good coming out of the court.
00:27:53.880We think the justices were viewing this issue in exactly the right way.
00:27:57.780What we're talking about here is whether a president can be criminally indicted for his official acts in office.
00:28:04.800We're not talking about private conduct.
00:28:06.820If a president shoots somebody dead or takes a bribe or anything like that, that would be private conduct.
00:28:12.580We're talking about can a president be indicted for official decisions that he makes while he's in office.
00:28:18.100And we believe that the Constitution provides a very simple answer to that, which is no, unless he's first impeached and convicted by the House and Senate.
00:28:26.480That's, in our view, what naturally follows by the executive vesting clause and the impeachment judgment clauses of the U.S. Constitution.
00:28:34.720And I think that's borne out by the fact that no president in American history has ever been criminally prosecuted for his official act.
00:28:42.280That's our system. That's our system. That's the way it's always been until we reached President Trump.
00:28:46.400And suddenly he's been hailed into court for quintessentially presidential conduct.
00:28:51.880I mean, if you look at the D.C. indictment, you're talking about asking the Department of Justice to investigate election fraud, considering replacing the acting attorney general.
00:29:01.740I mean, these are core executive functions.
00:29:03.880And in our view, if you don't have immunity for those sorts of acts, the presidency will be forever crippled, that every successive president will be essentially blackmailed by the threat of criminal prosecution once he leaves office, that the presidency itself will be defanged as an institution, and that will undermine our entire constitutional system of executive power.
00:29:27.180It's worth noting that in 1982, the Supreme Court recognized in Nixon v. Fitzgerald that a president has absolute civil immunity for his official acts in office.
00:29:38.340So all we're really asking the Supreme Court to do is apply that existing civil standard into the criminal context.
00:29:45.680And it seemed like the justices were deeply concerned about the idea that a president could be indicted for core official conduct.
00:29:52.940In terms of the SEAL Team 6 hypothetical, or at the Supreme Court we were asked about military coups, the short answer is that our Constitution, our system of government, provides very, very powerful checks against those sorts of abuses of office.
00:30:08.380Those checks do not include criminal prosecution.
00:30:11.140In the case of SEAL Team 6, if they're given a blatantly unlawful order, they're actually under a legal obligation to disobey that order.
00:30:18.980And I would certainly hope that that would happen if a president ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate his political rival.
00:30:25.940That doesn't mean that a president undertaking an official act like that, giving an order to the military, should be susceptible to criminal prosecution.
00:30:34.880Otherwise, I mean, President Obama could be indicted for drone strikes that killed American citizens.
00:30:40.000George W. Bush could be indicted for actions relating to the Iraq War.
00:30:44.040It's a never-ending cycle of recrimination and political prosecution that will severely damage the office of the presidency.
00:30:53.000So we view this case as even bigger than President Trump, bigger than the facts presented.
00:30:57.400We view this as being about our constitutional system and about safeguarding the office of the presidency.
00:31:03.580And we heard very similar concerns for many of the justices, Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Gorsuch, Justice Alito in particular.
00:31:12.160I think we had a very good day. I'm hopeful for how that opinion comes out.
00:31:17.440At the very least, we think that we're going to get a remand that will push this case off past Election Day,
00:31:23.960which is important for President Trump and for the sanctity of our electoral process.
00:31:28.760But we're hopeful that the Supreme Court recognizes a vigorous doctrine of executive immunity that will shield the presidency
00:31:35.820and ensure that presidents can make the tough decisions that they have to make without being unduly influenced by the threat of criminal prosecution once they leave office.
00:31:45.960Excellent. Excellent. Excellent answer. Thank you very much.
00:31:50.280All right, folks, if you're just tuning in, we're here with Will Scharf, who represents President Donald Trump as one of his attorneys.
00:31:58.380He's also a candidate for attorney general of the state of Missouri.
00:32:03.560We're going to cut to a quick commercial break, and then we're going to talk about that campaign for attorney general,
00:32:09.000along with my co-host Troy Smith of Slingshot.news.
00:32:14.040So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.
00:32:23.420We've learned through the pandemic we can never be caught unprepared again.
00:32:28.460And so many Americans, when COVID hit, they had nothing in the house.
00:32:31.880Stores were shut down, and doctors' offices were shut down, and even if doctors prescribed drugs,
00:32:38.260hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, pharmacists wouldn't fill the prescriptions.
00:34:56.860Will, during the Trump administration, you worked to support conservative judicial nominations.
00:35:02.180You played an instrumental role in the confirmations of Justices Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett, as well as dozens of other lower federal court judges, putting in place solid conservatives, consistent with President Trump's campaign pledge.
00:35:23.360As a federal prosecutor, you worked the violent crimes unit in one of the country's most dangerous cities.
00:35:31.180So it appears to me you have a broad legal experience.
00:35:35.040Tell us about your campaign for attorney general.
00:35:38.420You know, Roger, I'm sick and tired, like I know Republicans are around the country, of our politicians being bought and paid for by special interests, of kowtowing to the lobbyists, of not representing we the people in government.
00:35:52.460The core thesis of our campaign is that we as conservatives can do better than the political establishment we have, whether that's in Washington, D.C. or here in Missouri, in Jefferson City.
00:36:05.800My background, as you said, is as a constitutional attorney and as a violent crimes prosecutor, obviously now working for President Trump on some of the most important cases this country has seen in a very long time.
00:36:16.480And I'm a political outsider, and I want to shake things up in Jefferson City.
00:36:34.120But if things keep going the way that they are, I think we're going to have a very, very good summer.
00:36:38.600And it's just been heartening to me to see how many conservatives are really waking up for the first time.
00:36:43.640And understanding that just because you have an R next to your name doesn't mean that you're actually conservative, doesn't mean that you deserve the support of grassroots conservatives.
00:36:53.740Folks, running for an office like attorney general is extraordinarily expensive.
00:36:59.680Will Scharf is a candidate who is deserving of your support.
00:37:03.280We're going to put up a graphic now where you can donate to his campaign, and we strongly urge you to do so.
00:37:16.220And please send a generous contribution.
00:37:20.740Will Scharf is a dependable conservative with an extraordinary track record.
00:37:26.780He is a graduate of Princeton University as well as Harvard Law School.
00:37:30.940We're not going to hold that against him.
00:37:33.020He has worked for two federal appellate court judges.
00:37:36.220He is a solid, dependable conservative now at this moment, as we indicate, rendering absolutely crucial service to the president in this tsunami of lawfare that he is faced with.
00:37:52.660Will, I want to thank you for joining the show today.
00:37:55.140And if there's anything else we can do to help you in your election, I would be proud and happy to do so.
00:38:09.900All right, folks, that was Will Scharf, who is one of President Trump's lawyers, kind of giving us the latest on the documents case in Florida, the ridiculous hush money trial ongoing in New York, and also speaking to us about last week's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court pertaining to whether the president or not has immunity.
00:38:35.320Uh, Troy, there was a big meeting, uh, this weekend, uh, Donald Trump, uh, and his, uh, former nemesis, Governor Ron DeSantis, met, uh, for two hours privately, uh, in, uh, Miami.
00:38:53.160Now, it is my understanding, uh, that representatives of Governor DeSantis told the Washington Post, who broke this story, uh, that Trump had requested the meeting, yet my sources in the Trump camp tell me that's incorrect, uh, that it was DeSantis who wanted this meeting.
00:39:16.400The idea that Ron DeSantis has some enormous financial network, which candidate Trump now needs to tap into, is largely false.
00:39:31.520Among small and medium-sized donors, uh, DeSantis was an abject failure.
00:39:38.980Most of his campaign money in his, uh, in his campaign for president, uh, came from very, very large donors, uh, and, uh, from bundlers, uh, most of his donors, or most of his donations came from individuals or entities who had to give because they do business in the state of Florida, uh, where the governor has enormous power to affect their business.
00:40:07.460Uh, and, uh, uh, therefore people gave not because they loved Ron DeSantis, but because they had to.
00:40:14.160So this idea, uh, that, uh, that DeSantis could somehow deliver a financial network to the president, it's not accurate.
00:40:23.540Many, many of the larger bundlers who were supporting DeSantis have already come over to Trump.
00:40:31.140Uh, I'm really uncertain what the purpose of this meeting is.
00:40:36.500But I guess we couldn't decipher that unless we knew who actually asked for the meeting.
00:40:42.120Uh, and, uh, I don't think, uh, it was president Trump.
00:40:46.900Now I'm told, uh, that the meeting, uh, may have been somewhat contentious in the beginning.
00:40:52.040Uh, but once they got through that, that governor DeSantis pledged to do whatever he can and whatever is necessary to make sure that president Trump carries Florida.
00:41:09.540Once again, Troy, I want to go on record as saying that anybody who looks at Florida and thinks it is completely safe in a red state based on the last, uh, statewide elections, I think makes a mistake.
00:41:22.600While I would give president Trump an edge here, uh, the fact that the Democrats have put recreational marijuana on the ballot as a constitutional amendment, uh, and the fact that they have petitioned on a constitutional amendment on abortion rights.
00:41:39.940Essentially the repealing the six weeks ban, uh, uh, that DeSantis and the Republican legislature put into place, uh, uh, last year, uh, that is going to jack up, uh, turnout, uh, among younger voters, particularly, but also among more democratic leaning voters.
00:42:00.100And of course the abortion question will be used to try to shape, uh, uh, perceptions of the presidential campaign, uh, Biden and the Democrats, particularly the Florida Democrats, they would like this election to be about abortion.
00:42:15.100Uh, not about our open border, uh, not about the illegal invasion of America, uh, by migrants, uh, not about the potential for world war three, uh, not about shipping billions to Ukraine, uh, not about, uh, unfreezing hundreds of billions, uh, for Iran, not about the cost of a gallon of gasoline, which you can slowly see creeping up.
00:42:44.560Uh, not about, uh, not about, uh, not about, uh, not about the cost of groceries, uh, when you go to the supermarket, uh, if you can find what you're looking for, uh, they don't want it to be about any of these things, uh, they would like it to be about abortion.
00:43:00.960Well, Roger, I think I always come back to, uh, what you say, cause you know, we look at the, uh, situation that we uncovered in the 2022 election where DeSantis, um, fundraiser, Erica Alba kind of has her fingers all over this.
00:43:14.560Uh, Florida voters in charge, uh, uh, PAC that was given out money to, um, election supervisors across the state of Florida.
00:43:23.360Uh, and then I also look at the speculation.
00:43:26.280Uh, so you look at the election system just in Florida and you say, well, DeSantis really has some influence here.
00:43:31.560Um, and it's, and it's money that's coming from really nefarious groups of people.
00:43:36.020And I think, uh, it's been pointed out on this show many times, the idea that he would win Miami-Dade County in the way that he did is pretty much impossible.
00:43:43.500And I think, uh, it's, look, it's easy to look at the DeSantis election, Roger.
00:43:48.140I think for a lot of Republicans to say, well, you know, he won and, and, and Florida has a red governor, but at the same time, we have to look at how that was obtained.
00:43:55.000And I think DeSantis' way that he's, he's politically acting is a lot like the Democrats.
00:44:00.040I don't think we win by becoming the Democrats.
00:44:02.440I think we win, uh, by, by standing for what we believe in.
00:44:06.340And as far as DeSantis is concerned, I'm seeing more and more about VP speculation, Roger.
00:44:11.280And I always come back to what we talk about on this show.
00:44:13.720The, uh, it's, it's not prohibited, but you're saying that the Florida is a, is a question mark on its own, you know, without any kind of additional legal problems, Florida is still a toss up.
00:44:26.720Um, I think, and, and, and there's been no talk about this from you.
00:44:31.320You haven't mentioned this, but I've seen this online and people are speculating about it now because of this meeting that Trump could go back to the original thing that, you know, Republicans wanted and, and, and to put DeSantis on the ticket.
00:44:42.820I don't see that as a possibility because I think any chance you have of winning Florida goes out the window.
00:44:48.320If you pick a vice presidential candidate, um, in DeSantis, who is a resident of the same state as president Donald Trump, who also lives in Florida.
00:44:56.560So I'd like you to talk about that real quickly.
00:44:58.920Um, Trump picking DeSantis would kind of completely rule out any idea of Republicans winning the election and the state of Florida, wouldn't it?
00:45:05.780Uh, I don't think that that was the purpose of this meeting.
00:45:09.940I don't think Governor DeSantis is under consideration for the vice presidential nomination.
00:45:15.000As you know, the 12th Amendment of the Constitution, while it does not specifically prohibit, uh, uh, two individuals who are legal residents of the same state from being on the ticket for president and vice president, uh, it would, however, uh, force you to forfeit the electoral college votes of that state.
00:45:38.640Now there's an argument, uh, that the party could nominate, uh, two individuals, uh, from Florida.
00:45:45.920Let's say hypothetically, President Donald Trump, uh, and, uh, Congressman Byron Donalds, both legal residents, uh, of Florida.
00:45:54.560Uh, and, uh, they could certainly legally be on the ballot if the ticket won, uh, then theoretically, uh, before the electoral college met, uh, either President Trump, highly unlikely,
00:46:08.120or, uh, newly elected, uh, Vice President-elect Donalds, hypothetically, uh, could legally change, uh, their state of revidence to a different state and therefore avoid, uh, the 12th Amendment, uh, uh, prescription.
00:46:26.020I'm not an attorney and I don't know if that would work, uh, but I do know that explaining it to the voters, uh, would be, uh, extraordinarily, uh, difficult.
00:46:37.760Well, uh, uh, uh, there are a number of potential candidates in Florida.
00:46:42.800I don't really count DeSantis, but, uh, uh, uh, Ron, uh, Senator Marco Rubio has been named.
00:46:49.540General Michael Flynn has been mentioned.
00:47:04.160But you still have that, uh, Florida, uh, 12th Amendment issue, uh, all the way back when there was first discussion of DeSantis challenging, uh, Trump, uh, I raised this 12th Amendment question, uh, to those who said, oh, well, look, we can, we can avoid this clash of the titans, uh, by forming a Trump-DeSantis ticket.
00:47:29.020I think the 12th Amendment of the Constitution pretty much, uh, prohibits, uh, that, um, uh, I'm going to do a, uh, a quick, uh, shameless, uh, commercial pitch here, folks, uh, Troy, because believe it or not, there's a lot of people who have not read my book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ.
00:47:49.760Uh, this is a New York Times bestseller, uh, in which I use, uh, eyewitness evidence, fingerprint evidence, deep Texas politics, and a lot of documentation to make the case that it was LBJ at the helm of a plot that included the CIA, uh, organized crime, the mob, big Texas oil, uh, the Secret Service, uh, and the banking interests, uh, to, uh, kill President John F. Kennedy.
00:48:23.640You can get your very own copy, uh, of The Man Who Killed Kennedy, uh, by going to TheManWhoKilledKennedy.com.
00:48:33.860Uh, there's a brief, uh, discussion there of the book, and when you order by going to TheManWhoKilledKennedy.com, uh, you will not only get the paperback version
00:48:43.620that has three extra chapters, uh, but it will be personally signed.
00:48:48.680It can even be inscribed to you personally if you so request.
00:49:30.920So, uh, over the weekend, we had the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and I, I took, uh, some pictures, uh, from the internet of people that had showed up to this event,
00:49:40.140and I wanted to get your comments on some of the outfits, because some of them, very interesting.
00:49:44.320I know you've already commented on a few of these.
00:49:47.280I think, uh, we can start, uh, with Fox News host Kennedy, who had this really interesting, like, plaid dress.
00:49:53.820I'm gonna get your comments on this, uh, from the White House Correspondents' Dinner.